Augustina + James: Part 2

Augustina could feel the strangers watching as she walked through the halls at school. She heard their whispers, at first, but as the days and weeks passed those whispers turned to talking. Eventually, the talking practically turned to screams for how loud and unabashed they were. They may as well be shouting it at her face.

“Home-wrecker,” they called her. Other popular options were “snake,” “slut,” and simply “bitch.” Rumors had spread through the school and now everyone knew that she had whisked James away after the prom. Since he hadn’t returned to school since then, they all made their assumptions. Some seemed to believe that she was keeping him prisoner like some kind of lovestruck psychopath. Others were closer to the truth, which is that James was hiding because he didn’t want to face up to what he had done.

Augustina wasn’t upset about him staying away from school, though. She even brought him his home study packet each week, and with only three more weeks of the school year, she knew that it wouldn’t negatively impact his educational career. Truth be told, she was glad to have him all to herself.

She didn’t answer the questions that she was asked about him. She kept her responses cryptic, even when people accused her of being Machiavellian—having no remorse or morals her manipulation of others. She knew that she was only that way because she cared.

It wasn’t exactly a shocking accusation to her that she had manipulated James, anyway. She’d known exactly what she was doing. It was all by design; she was the mastermind of the events that led to James being hers. To him, it still appeared as if he’d simply let out his free-flowing sails and allowed the wind to blow him where it would; but she knew that she was the real wind in his sails, the force behind it all.

In any case, her plan had worked, and she didn’t feel badly about it. She certainly wasn’t planning on letting some gossip get in the way of her newfound love. She guarded it well, believing that their romance wouldn’t die if they could keep it just theirs. She pictured herself levitating above all the messes that had been made, far above all of the drama. She could handle some shade being thrown at her if it meant that she got to be the one by his side— and in her mind, she could picture herself sitting with him in the peaceful kind of shade, that of a tree that grew fuller and stronger every day, sheltering her and providing a quiet place to sit.

She told herself it was fine to be hated at school. She hadn’t come to that school to make friends. She’d come because her parents had decided to move her to Lewisberg in the middle of her high school experience. She started junior year as the new girl, and considering the small-town, everybody-knows-everybody-since-birth vibes that emanated from every inch of the place, she never found a way to truly fit in.

That was alright with her, she convinced herself. If she couldn’t be one of them, she would be a suburban legend instead—her and James both would be, together. They’d be the town scandal of the year. She grinned mischievously at the thought.

As she sat through her classes that day, she let her mind wander back to some of her favorite memories of her and James. She thought of that first night they had together. She remembered the whispers they exchanged in the dark: “Are you sure?” he had asked. And her response: “Never have I ever before… but with you, right now, I couldn’t be more ready.” She thought of the feeling of his skin beneath her hands, of discovering and memorizing the shape of his body. It was all so new and exciting. She could easily imagine the feel of his arms twisting around her, of the two of them twisted in the bedsheets together. She easily got lost in those memories. She remembered the sound of his voice, asking her to stay. He’d wanted her to stay at the beach house with him that night, and when he asked, she had happily obliged.

Augustina savored these memories. She knew that as a couple, her and James were a shot in the darkest dark. She’d known that from the very start. Yet, she also knew that she was completely unarmed. She had no defenses against him, against these feelings that were taking over. She felt that she was so in love that she might stop breathing. When she considered the possibilities of how it might end, the feeling she got was so blue, like a deep and endless ocean of sadness. So, she tried not to think about it.

When the school year ended and summer came, she went to stay at the beach house with James as often as she could, which was quite often. Her parents didn’t mind her coming and going as she pleased, and she used that freedom to enjoy her time with her new love.

Some days they would spend hours lounging on the beach, enjoying the salt air and warm sunshine. Augustina thoroughly enjoyed the visual of James shirtless, and often when she thought he wasn’t looking, she would gaze at his chest and back. His skin was smooth and lightly tanned, glistening with a light sheen of sweat beneath the sun. She wished that she could write her name on it—on every visible inch of him. She wanted to label him as her own.

It was a cruel summer for her, constantly battling between her head and her heart. Her head told her that nothing is as it seems, and that they shouldn’t rush into things. He had just “broken up with” Betty, after all, and she didn’t want to be just a rebound. But the truth was that she was too in love to think straight, and her heart was living for the hope of it all. Wanting was enough for her, at least for the time being. She didn’t need anything more. She could at least pretend that it could last forever; and because of that, life was never worse but never better.

When she wasn’t at the beach house with him, she would try to kill time at home. She sometimes made plans with friends from school, but always ended up canceling them just in case James called. She felt like she was always waiting for him to be waiting below her window on the front lawn, calling up to her to invite her to go out somewhere with him. But he never left the beach house. The disappointment of her fantasies not being realized was painful enough that she felt like it was killing her slowly. She would be better off throwing those dreams out the window. Still, it seemed that what didn’t kill her only made her want him more.

In her mind, at least, she imagined them somewhere else. She would transport them to somewhere the culture was clever, and where their romance would be vibrant, like Paris. They stumbled down pretend alleyways in her dreams, drinking cheap wine and making believe that it was champagne. They would be taken by the view of the flashing lights of the Eiffel tower at midnight. They would even be bright enough to overshadow the memory of the last flashing lights they’d seen together— the flashes from the cameras taking photos at the front of the school during prom night, when she had stolen James away. She didn’t like to think about that night, knowing that he had still been in love with Betty at the time.

Things were different after those first weeks together. She’d worked hard to keep the privacy sign on their door, metaphorically speaking, by blocking the rest of the world out. She’d done her best to make him forget about Betty, and truthfully she’d hoped that she could brainwash him into loving her forever instead. Her plotting hadn’t ended when she’d gotten James to go home with her that first night. She continued to map out her plans, drawing them with her mind on the bedroom ceiling at night, as she stared up unable to sleep because of her thoughts of James. In her most over-the-top fantasies, she would confess her truth to him in a love letter full of swooping, sloping, cursive letters. She would tell him that she’d loved him from the first moment she’d seen him.

She knew that it wasn’t a good idea to do that, though. She needed to continue to play it cool, or she would risk scaring him off. She knew that he wasn’t completely committed to her, at least not yet.

He started taking calls from the phone at the beach house, she noticed. It was always when she was distracted with something else, like cooking a meal for them or even falling asleep watching a movie on the couch. The phone would ring briefly before he quietly but quickly darted over to pick it up. In her peripheral vision, she would see him talking on the phone, trying to be discreet and speaking in a hushed voice. She couldn’t help but wonder if it was Betty he was talking to.

She let those moments slide, like a hose on one of the slippery plastic beach chairs that they sat on during those warm summer days. All was quickly forgiven, because she knew that she didn’t yet have the privilege of demanding more from him. When he asked, once, if it was okay for him to use the phone at the house, which he’d already been doing quite a bit, she casually told him “it’s cool.” She tried to make no rules for him, nothing that could break the illusion of the fragile heaven she was living in. As the summer went on, Augustina’s fantasies of their future together only grew. She imagined them continuing to fall in love and ending up married in a few years. Further down the road, they would surprise the whole school when they ended up back at their class reunion, walking in together. They may have had mismatched star signs, and a slightly scandalous start to their relationship, but she convinced herself that silly things like that wouldn’t matter in the long run.

Eventually, even her unobservant and ever-distracted mother noticed that something was different about her. She was love-struck, plain and simple. Her mother made a comment that she seemed like her head was in the clouds more than usual lately. She knew that at seventeen, she was living in a totally different reality than her mom. She was in love, while her mom was settled into a boring and dispassionate marriage. She couldn’t understand—in fact, nobody could, she was convinced. Augustina kept her secrets to herself.

Having nobody to confide in seemed fine at first, but as the weeks passed she realized that it would have been nice to have at least one person to talk to. This was especially true when she started to see the cracks in her relationship with James. He began to seem more distant when they were together. When he kissed her, it still stopped time for her, but she could sense that while her heart belonged to him, he was not equally hers. Something about him was just absent for a lot of the time. It was is if he wasn’t really there. She felt like she was trying to see the cards that he wouldn’t show, and the longer this went on the closer she felt to folding. She kept striking matches, trying to reignite the passion she’d felt from him in the beginning, but it seemed like he just kept blowing them out. It wasn’t fair.

Waiting for him to give her some kind of reassurance was torture. She was standing on a tightrope alone, trying to hold her breath just a little bit longer. She was pacing on shaky ground, and her balance was faltering. She tried to hold out hope, telling herself that he knew that he better lock it down with her, because otherwise she wouldn’t stick around. Good ones never wait, and she was a catch… wasn’t she? But her waiting turned into sadness, and then slowly faded into madness.

It simply wouldn’t stop, and by the end of the summer she felt like she had lost almost all hope. She was halfway out the door, ready to give up on the silly dream of a real relationship with James. And yet, that door just wouldn’t seem to close. She knew that even after all that time of him giving her nothing back, all it would take would be for him to say “don’t go,” and she would stay forever.

Everything finally came to a head one day when summer was drawing to a close. It was time for James to go back home, so he had asked her to drive down, pick him up, and then drive him back to his house. She’d suggested it might be fun to drive one of his cars up to him, so he could enjoy driving them on the way back. But he had dismissed the idea, saying that his cars were very expensive and his parents would flip out if he let anyone else drive them.

James had at least three cars that Augustina knew of—he was very much a car guy. But one of them was a clunky old pickup truck, so she knew for a fact that his excuse wasn’t true. She grumbled to herself about his stupid old pickup truck he wouldn’t let her drive as she climbed into the front seat of her own small, modest car.

When she arrived, she went into the house to find James had packed up his suitcase and was ready to go. It was the same suitcase that she’d picked up on her way to see him the first time after prom night; the one that he’d asked his mom to pack and leave outside of his front door for Augustina to fetch. He didn’t require much, just a few changes of clothes. He’d needed to figure out how to operate the washer and dryer to do his own laundry for the first time in his life, but Augustina felt that was probably a good thing for him to know how to do—at least until he was past his bachelor years and had a live-in girlfriend or wife to do it for him. She still hoped that it might even be her.

He stood up from the couch when she came inside, reaching for his luggage, but she asked if they could spend some time at the house before leaving first. He halfheartedly agreed before flopping back down onto the couch. Augustina could feel herself deflating as his apparent disinterest became harder to ignore.

“So, I guess this is it. Our summer love affair has come and gone,” she chuckled, trying to play casual.

“I guess,” was his only response.

Augustina cleared her throat. “This month especially seemed to go by so fast. It feels like August just slipped away. Now it’s just a moment in time that’s gone forever.” She allowed herself to show a hint of emotion here, testing the waters with a small wistful frown. His expression remained distant and distracted.

“Look, James,” she said, huffing a sigh. “I… I don’t want this to be over. I want there to be an us.” He finally met her gaze at that.

“I love you,” she said. He said nothing back. She felt her heart caving in with every second of silence that passed.

She didn’t understand why he was pulling away from her now. The summer that they’d had together was amazing. It felt like they had found Wonderland—like they were somewhere else, in a special world of their own. Had they gotten lost in it? Was it nothing more than a temporary fling? Had she imagined that he’d been returning her feelings? No, she refused to believe that. What they had was real. But in the end, in Wonderland, they both went mad. They’d forgotten the real world, and now it was time to face reality. She knew that they could make it work, if he wanted to.

“Will you call when you’re back at school?” She asked, forcing hopefulness into her voice and fighting the sense of defeat she was feeling inside. He didn’t answer, just looked away and shrugged. Augustina sighed in exasperation.

“I don’t think so,” he finally said. “We’ll just screw it up. These next few weeks are going to be trying times. I need to figure things out with Betty,” he said, causing Augustina to wince at the name of her competition for James’ heart. “I’m sorry but… I don’t think it’s really worth trying to make us something more. This summer was fun, but I don’t think we’re right for each other in the real world.”

Angry tears welled in her eyes and began to overflow. It felt like she was reaching for him, but he was already gone.

“You were never mine, were you?” She asked him, knowing that there was no response he would offer her, and certainly none she would find comforting. The sense of crushing loss that overwhelmed her then threatened to break her. She had to remind herself that she wasn’t dying. He was just a stupid boy. She knew she had to go back home.

She stomped to the car and got in, slamming the door behind her. Then she rolled down the window, and screamed at him, “for whatever it’s worth, I really did love you! I meant that. But clearly that’s just about the worst thing you’ve ever heard. And you know what?” She paused, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Since you’re too polite to do it, I’m going to go ahead and break my own heart right now. I think you love yourself more than you could ever love me. We’re done, James. You can find your own way home.”

With that, she screeched out of the driveway and onto the coastal highway, letting the anger and pain fuel her. She drove like a madwoman, screaming and crying. Even though she had technically been the one to leave, she knew that he had left her emotionally first, and that abandonment was a wound to her heart.

Questions of despair raced through her mind on the drive home. Why had he whispered in the dark with her all of those nights, only to leave her devastated? Why did he have to lead her on and then twist the knife? He had made her want him and love him and then he’d walked away and left her bleeding. She had known on some level that their summer together was like a knife, and she’d been waiting for him just to cut to the bone. That didn’t make it any easier when the end finally came.

She cut the headlights on the car as she thought about all of the things he’d done to hurt her. She was feeling reckless and at that point she thought maybe the best way to get back at him would be to die in a fiery car wreck after he’d demolished her heart. Let him live with that for the rest of his miserable life. She drove blindly for a minute before relenting, turning the lights back on. She wouldn’t give him the gift of never having to face her again.

She wanted him to see her every day at school, knowing what he had thrown away. Maybe she would even go out with all of his best friends. There was nothing stopping her, after all! She told herself that he could search the world for something else to make him feel like what they had, and he would never find it. She knew that he would regret this choice, and she tried to find some comfort in that. She vowed that from that moment on, she would never let him see her hurting over him again. If she bled, he would be the last to know.

Only a few days had passed before, to her utter surprise, James called her. He told her that he was home, and that he didn’t blame her for leaving him at the beach house. And then… he apologized. Augustina could barely believe what she was hearing.

“Look, I made a huge mistake,” he told her, his voice full of regret. “I think that we should give us a try at being a couple.” He paused and Augustina felt like she was hardly breathing. “We’ll get back together,” he said, the wording striking her as strange. But then he added “if you want to,” and she took a moment to truly consider it. Before she could give an answer, he went on.

“There’s just one thing I would ask,” he said, all too casually. Her stomach lurched with dread. Here was the catch. “I would want to keep it a secret,” he said.

Augustina felt those words like a punch to the gut. Why would he want to be with her but keep it a secret? She was confused, angry, hurt, and hopeful all at the same time. She didn’t know how to respond, but took a moment to gather her racing thoughts before saying, “I don’t know how I feel about that, James. I don’t want to keep secrets just to keep you.”

He sighed through the phone, and then let the silence settle for a few long moments. “Meet me behind the mall tonight at ten. I’ll show you how much I want you to be my girlfriend.” There was a wicked promise in those words that she found highly distracting, and before she knew it, she was agreeing to meet him and hanging up the phone.

She didn’t know what she was thinking as she sat in her car in the dark back parking lot later that night. She couldn’t decide if she was excited at the prospect of having a relationship with James after all that had happened. It felt impossible to separate her feelings of longing for him from her reasonable mind telling her that he was only going to hurt her again.

It didn’t take long for that truth to sink in, however, as the minutes passed and the clock rolled over to 10:15, and then 10:45, and then 11:30. At that point, she was fuming and, more than anything, confused. Why had he asked her to meet him and then not shown up? What kind of sick game was this?

Shaking her head and taking deep breaths to calm her rising anger, she put her car back into drive and headed in the direction of James’ neighborhood. When she reached his street, she parked at the end and paced down the block towards his house. When she got close enough to see the driveway, she realized that one of his cars was missing. He wasn’t home, it seemed. She stood on the sidewalk alone, and decided to wait for him to come home. Then, she had a sudden thought that perhaps something had gone amiss, and he had gone to meet her at her house instead. She rushed back to her car and drove home. His car wasn’t there either. She decided to sit in her own driveway, hoping and waiting for him to drive by. But she quickly lost her patience and decided to go inside and wait there instead.

Hours later, she’d drifted off to sleep on the couch and her dreams were filled with the sound of waves crashing on the shore as she sat on the beach with James in the warm sunshine. She startled awake to a knock at the door and jumped up, dashing to the door in anticipation of it being James on the other side, with a perfect explanation of why he hadn’t showed up. But it wasn’t James. It wasn’t anybody, in fact. She had imagined the sound completely, and as soon as she realized that, she closed the door dejectedly and collapsed back onto her couch. Of course it wasn’t James knocking on her door. He didn’t want to see her anymore. Her whole life was ruined, she decided then.

The next day, James had the gall to call her again. She answered the phone hesitantly, but as soon as she heard his voice, her tone shifted to cold fury. “What do you want?” She gritted out.

“I’m so sorry Augustina. I had a family emergency at home and I couldn’t meet you. I wanted to, really! It was just so chaotic and I didn’t even have a moment to call you and tell you I had to cancel. I’m sorry, I swear,” he said in a rush. He clearly didn’t know that she’d been at his house last night, had seen that his car was missing, and therefore knew that he hadn’t been home.

“You’re really bad at lying,” was all she said at first. She let that sink in before she went on. “I went to your house last night. Your car wasn’t there.”

She could practically hear the gears whirring in his head as he tried to come up with some kind of explanation. The silence stretched on uncomfortably before he finally blurted out, “you were at my house? That’s insane, Augustina. That’s practically stalker behavior. My God… I think my friends were right about you. You’re obsessive and crazy.”

She couldn’t believe the words that he had uttered, and it took her a moment to come up with an appropriate response. “You know what, James? I could state the obvious and tell you that I didn’t get my perfect fantasy with you. And you can go ahead and talk to your friends about me and say that I’m crazy. But you? You are a sadistic, heartless boy. I don’t know what you hoped to gain from your little trick last night. Maybe you heard that Betty has moved on and you decided to try to grab me back after throwing me away, because you wanted to make her feel jealous. And maybe you changed your mind after that and decided that ‘waiting for her’ would be a better bet.” From his stunned silence, she could tell that her guess had hit close to home. She wasn’t done yet, though.

“You present yourself like a gentleman, but in reality you are nothing but a redneck piece of garbage. You’re a heartbreak that I never should have let anywhere close to me, and a complete waste of my time. I should’ve slept with one eye open at night when I was sleeping next to you,” she seethed. “As far as I’m concerned, you are just a picture to burn at this point. But since I don’t have any pictures of you to burn, I’ll have to settle for the pages I’ll be ripping out of my old diaries. Any pages I wrote about you will be gone. I’ll be striking a match and watching those burn later tonight, you can be sure of that. I never want to see another reminder of you again. I hope you know that I am planning my revenge as we speak.” She let the full force of her fury seep into her words, and almost imagined that she could hear him shudder on the other end of the phone line.

“I’m sorry,” he stuttered lamely. “I didn’t mean to do this. I swear I’m not as bad as all that. If you could give me a chance to make it up to you—”

“No,” she said, cutting him off before he could finish. The word held a heavy finality.

“No,” she repeated. “You will never speak to me again. And if you come around here trying to say sorry to me, I can promise you that my daddy is going to show you how sorry you’ll be.” The threat in her words left no room for uncertainty about just how pissed off she was.

She hung up the phone and sunk to her knees on the living room carpet. Her first love had not gone the way she had hoped it would, not at all. She was heartbroken, and as she let the waves of hurt and grief wash over her, she felt something click into place. She built a protective wall around herself in those moments. She didn’t realize it, but it would take her over a decade to learn how to take them down again.